At this point, Bracketology is even more abstract than art and it's always more of an art than a science. That doesn't stop people from still doing it.

There's not a better post-season climax than NCAA Basketball's Tournament. Giving 68 teams a chance to win it all, this tournament brings more drama than a soap opera. The first two days of the tournament are widely considered two of the best sports days of the year.

The Art of Bracketology is vast, complex, and lacking in structure. Then why do it? Because it's one of the most debatable topics in basketball.

I'm not sure if I would like that or not. I'm a VCU(and Memphis) fan too. But it would be kind of cool to have an Elite 8 matchup between LSU and VCU. I think it would be a good game, and hopefully LSU would win.

quote:Here's the NCAA's bracket rules, which I have added to the post.

Thanks! Very complex but I guess the NCAA is trying to be as fair as possible during the selection process.

Now I see how you came up with the regions and teams there-in. Good work!

When I was reading about the actual team selections (rather than the placement in brackets) I came up with a "what if?". A voting committee member can't vote in any part of the selection process that contains a team he/she is affiliated with (good thing). It's therefore possible that quite a few members would be unable to vote in a certain phase of the balloting, because they are all affiliated with a team being voted upon. This would mean that far less voters would be responsible for the picks in that part of the ballot. Might that skew the results??

quote:LSU will be a 6 seed. He's underselling us right now to appear un-biased.

I am worried about the way the SEC has played this early season. We didn't get the big wins that I hoped for. So I see a lot of people discounting our conference games.

If we could have beat UMASS or Memphis, we would be looking at a much higher ceiling, however, I'm worried that even if we go 13-5 we won't get much higher than 6-7 seed and I think we probably lose a game or two we aren't suppose to and go 12-6 in conference.

I think Tennessee and Missouri still have a very good shot at making the tournament so don't look too hard into the fact that I only put 3 SEC teams in. At this point, I just don't think the SEC gets more than 3-4. It's possible the SEC gets 5 but I'd say outside of that there's no chance.

I have no way to determine regions. Especially this early, I did not look at that at all. I got the 68 teams that I believed "earned" a bid and then ranked them. Then I just placed them in order and snaked them around.

The way that they determine which region a team ends up in is very interesting though. They try not to set you up to play anyone in conference in the first two rounds. They also try and keep regular season OOC games out of the first two rounds.